


Bother Figure

by wedelia



Series: Shazam!/DCEU Crossovers [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DC Extended Universe, DCU, Justice League (2017), Shazam! (2019)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Family, Fluff, Gen, Not Beta Read, one of these tags is not like the others, the Dad Feels are strong in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 01:18:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18622123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wedelia/pseuds/wedelia
Summary: Look, Billy already has a dad, okay? His name is Victor Vasquez, and he’s the best.But that doesn't stop Billy from accidentally calling Batman the D-word at the end of an unofficial Justice League meeting.





	Bother Figure

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about waiting until Father’s Day to post this, but I’m way too impatient for that, so here it is now. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think! :)
> 
> Also, this story centers around a joke I’m borrowing from Brooklyn-99 where Jake accidentally calls Captain Holt 'Dad'. I included that basically word-for-word in this fic because I think it added to it, but I want to state for the record that most of the dialogue in that scene isn't mine.

Maybe the whole thing begins when Billy starts to call Victor ‘Dad’. This initially happens by accident, which probably should have been an early warning sign for Future-Billy to take to heart.

But in the situation even Present-Billy is too flustered to do anything except babble, “Sorry if I just made things awkward, I didn't mean anything by it—it just slipped out—”

Because the entire family is in the living room watching an action movie, and Billy has just said, “Hey, Dad, can you pass the popcorn—”

And then watched with slow-dawning horror as everyone turned to him with expressions varying from curiosity to amusement to—

—whatever that emotion is that’s flashing across Victor’s face just before he smiles and says, “It’s more than fine with me if you want to call me that. You're my son.”

Billy stops babbling. After a second of silence, he smiles back at Victor and thinks, _Hmm. Maybe._

 

He actually does start to drop the word ‘Dad’ with some regularity following that. Billy starts slow—with a _thanks, Dad_ here and a _sorry, Dad_ there, especially when they're in a situation where it's just the two of them and Billy doesn't have to be self-conscious about it—until he comes to like the way the word sounds in his mouth.

_Dad._ It’s nice. It has a kind of comfortable ring to it. Billy hadn't really considered what it would be like to have a dad before meeting Victor—he had foster fathers before, sure, but they were more like housemates than parents, since Billy had been too preoccupied with finding his mom to put effort into making connections with other potential parental figures. Now, though, having gained experience with Victor’s silly jokes and well-meaning lectures and occasionally-frustrating insistence on keeping a curfew, the word ‘Dad’ is tied up with all sorts of sentimental connections for Billy.

It slots itself into his vocabulary faster than he expects it to, to the point where saying it becomes nearly instinctive.

And that’s not a problem...yet.

 

The first time they meet, Bruce Wayne is bleeding out in an alley in Philadelphia and Billy—as his un-Shazam-ed teenage self—finds him there while walking home from an afternoon patrol. In retrospect, Billy probably should have waited longer to change back; it would be easier to help as a seeming-adult with superpowers than as plain Billy Batson.

But things are what they are. And what they are is horrifying, because there is a growing pool of blood darkening the pavement under Bruce’s tuxedo jacket, and he looks frighteningly pale.

“Holy moly.” Billy drops to his knees beside this injured stranger and presses down against the stab wound at his side to help slow the bleeding. “What happened? Have you already called the cops? Or an ambulance? I think I left my phone in my backpack, but—”

Bruce grits his teeth against the pain. “I’m fine. Leave me.”

Billy raises an eyebrow. “Um. No way. Not doing that. I don't know if you've seen yourself, man, but you're not looking too hot right now.”

Then his brow furrows and he says, “Hey, aren't you Bruce Wayne?”

Bruce makes a frustrated noise. “That doesn't matter. Listen. I need you to—” He closes his eyes at the shot of pain that goes through him at his sudden (unsuccessful) attempt to sit up and opens them again when it has passed— “I need you to get my phone. I was going to, but it might be a better idea for me to stay here.” Bruce nods in the direction of a phone on the ground a few feet away from where he lies now.

Billy hurries to grab it. The screen is cracked. That's a pity, because it looks expensive. Just before picking it up, Billy grimaces at the blood on his hands and—realizing that sacrifices must be made for the greater good—wipes one of them off on his jeans, which have already been stained by what he was kneeling in.

(He totally isn't looking forward to explaining _that_ on laundry day. He spares a moment to contemplate how likely it is that Rosa will notice if he's missing a pair of jeans. Very likely, he suspects. Rosa notices everything.)

The phone has a password lock. Billy passes it to Bruce with his un-bloodied hand and says, trying for nonchalance but with nerves showing through in his voice, “So, what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?”

Bruce’s terse reply: “Bleeding.”

Billy snorts. “Well, yeah, duh. But how did you end up here? Is there a bad guy you need me to chase down for you? I’ll do it.”

His eyes brighten a bit when he offers. The circumstances are probably too grim for that to really be appropriate, but, hey, Billy can't help it. It's been a while since he's had the chance to fight a criminal more challenging than a run-of-the-mill mugger.

_Am I a bad person for being excited that a crime has been committed?_ Billy wonders. _Probably yes._

Bruce has dialed the number of the person he's trying to reach and is holding his cracked phone up to his ear when he casts Billy a doubting look and says, “I don't think this is the kind of thing you should be caught up in, kid.”

Billy frowns. “My name is Billy. And I’m more capable than you think.”

Bruce hums noncommittally. The other end of the line picks up. He says, “Leslie, it’s Bruce—”

And that is pretty much the end of that. Billy waits with Bruce in the alley for a concerningly long amount of time until a doctor with a first-aid kit shows up to take the stabbing victim away. Bruce warns Billy not to get so close to suspicious alleys in the future and—with a kind of grudging acknowledgment—says, “Thanks.”

The doctor’s car drives off, and Billy shouts after it, “You’re welcome!”

 

Billy considers telling Freddy about his strange encounter with Bruce Wayne but decides against it. He doesn't think Freddy would believe him.

He should have asked for a selfie.

 

Things, as they tend to do, get weirder. Weirder as in Billy—this time as Shazam—finds himself flying after a car headed out of the city on the road toward Gotham and ends up caught in the blast zone when it explodes.

Because that's a thing cars do now, apparently.

Batman finds him in the wreckage. He peers down at Billy, who’s dizzy from being thrown out of the air and into the side of a tree (which is currently uprooted and splintered into jagged halves on the ground next to Billy), and wastes no time getting to the interrogation. “What are you doing here?”

Wait.

Billy recognizes those not-so-dulcet tones.

“ _Bruce?”_

Batman goes completely still. Narrowing his eyes and stalking closer, he asks, “How do you know that name?”

Billy gulps. Then laughs. “Ha. It's me?” He figures that if Batman’s secret identity has been blown it's only fair if he divulges his, too. “Billy. From the alley.”

Batman glowers.

Billy rolls his eyes. Why is it so hard to believe that a superhero can also maintain a secret identity as a teenage boy? Billy understands that there are major physical differences between him and his Shazam-self, but c’mon.

“Here, I’ll show you,” he says, getting up from the ground and readying himself, because there are no other people around (for now) and he wants to prove the point.

He takes a few steps back and starts to open his mouth to say—

“Stop.” Batman sounds tired. He pinches the bridge of his nose, sighs, and says, “I believe you.”

Billy blinks. “You do?”

Batman nods. Every line of the expression Billy can see behind that dark cowl hints at resignation. “That wouldn't be the craziest thing I’ve heard this week.”

Huh. Billy doesn't know whether to be awed by the idea of Batman’s undoubtedly wild life experiences in crime-ridden Gotham or insulted at the insinuation that Billy’s I’m-a-teenager-but-also-a-superhero revelation doesn't merit even a little bit of shock. He lands on a confusing mix of both feelings.

“Also,” Batman adds, “I traced the Red Cyclone’s YouTube account back to an address in the area near where we met a while ago. And the kid behind the camera sounded about your age. I had some suspicions.”

That helps soothe Billy’s ruffled pride some. “Oh.”

Batman half-smiles. (Billy thinks that on Batman that’s the equivalent of a normal person’s full smile. Batman does, after all, have a Serious Vigilante Persona to maintain, and actually smiling probably interferes with that. Makes him look too much like his civilian self.) The half-smile is fleeting, though, because it is quickly replaced by a frown, and then Batman-who-is-also-Bruce says, “You never answered my question. What are you doing here? Gotham is my territory.”

Billy thinks the answer to that should be obvious. “I was chasing some bad guys.”

“Bad guys?” Batman-Bruce’s voice is dry.

Billy makes a gesture to the bits of scrap metal all around them. “The ones in the car. Or—uh—they were in the car before they bailed out and exploded it, but I’m not sure where they are now.”

“I know where they are.” Bruce glares at the strewn-out car parts as if they've personally offended him. “They are the ones I had an…altercation…with the day you found me in that alley. I had tried to catch them off-guard. It backfired. As we speak they're in an underground hideout gathering supplies to break the Joker out of Arkham.”

Hold on a second. Billy reels at this news. “The guys controlling that car were the ones who stabbed you?”

“Yes.” Bruce seems a bit disgruntled about having to carry on this conversation. “That's what I said.”

“Wow,” Billy says, wide-eyed. “This is amazing!”

“What?”

Billy is close to bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement. “It’s been forever since I’ve fought an actual criminal mastermind! And if the Joker’s involved in this, it’s the big league. This is so cool. We should work together; let me help you.”

And Bruce—against his better judgement—does.

 

Everything goes according to Bruce’s meticulously detailed plan, ending with the Joker still in Arkham, his underlings on the way to a lengthy prison sentence, and—something Bruce hadn't planned for—Billy insisting on exchanging phone numbers “just in case you need me for something, man—all you have to do is call. Or, you know, even if you don't need something. If you just want to take me to your secret headquarters and let me drive your batmobile, that would be cool, too.”

Bruce agrees to give Billy his contact information, but only because he has grown sort of helplessly charmed by the kid’s enthusiasm. He doesn't expect to actually see Billy again.

He doesn't anticipate Billy’s stubborn insistence on staying in touch.

 

They team up often enough afterwards that Bruce develops a sense of reluctant fondness and responsibility for this teenager— _he’s only fifteen, he’s practically a_ baby, _and I’m letting him put himself in danger_ , Bruce laments, sometimes, when he’s in the mood for some good old-fashioned self-flagellation—and Billy gets to be less intimidated by Bruce’s Batman persona.

(Though some of the intimidation definitely still lingers—it’s _Batman._ Occasionally when he threatens criminals Bruce’s voice is so menacing Billy could swear it sounds like he gargles gravel in preparation for it.)

Billy thinks it's awesome. Bruce is like a wise older mentor showing him how to hone his craft (his craft, of course, being viligantism, which is basically just prowling around places until there’s a crime in progress that needs to be stopped).

Privately Bruce thinks of it as glorified babysitting. He doesn’t mind it as much as he might have guessed he would, though; there’s something refreshing about being around Billy’s un-self-conscious exuberance.

 

Fairly early on in their friendship, Batman arrives at the rooftop where he and Shazam have scheduled a meeting to catch each other up to speed with what’s happening in their respective cities (and lives, maybe, if Billy succeeds in coaxing anecdotes about the goings-on at Wayne Manor out of Bruce, which has been occurring more and more frequently). Upon this arrival, he spots breakable-teenager-Billy jumping off a very tall building a short distance away and waiting until he's in the air to yell _Shazam,_ seemingly just for the fun of it _._ Bruce nearly has a heart attack.

There's this irrational fear—no, actually, it’s a perfectly rational fear, Bruce doesn't know in what world it would be irrational to be concerned at seeing a kid you love (or, ah, feel responsible for) _jumping off of a building_ right in front of you while you are powerless to stop him—in Bruce’s chest, constricting his airways so that he can't take an easy breath again until he sees Billy safe and beaming at him a few yards from where Bruce himself is standing.

“Hi, Bruce,” Billy says, cheerful. As if that stunt didn't just shave a year off of Bruce’s life.

And Bruce is _irritated._

He launches into a lecture about not taking unnecessary risks—he’s aware of the hypocrisy of this as he's doing it, but he's also not a teenager, so he thinks that he has probably already passed the age when he should have learned better, and now he's just stuck with the self-sacrificing, adrenaline-seeking habits that he has.

But anyway, that's not the point. The point is that he refuses to pretend he didn't witness what he has just witnessed, to make small talk like everything's fine and several vivid images of what it would be like to watch Billy fall to his death after jumping off a building didn’t flash through his mind with terrifying realism only moments ago.

That's what Billy wants him to do. The kid—well, the adult-looking, costumed man now, but Bruce can’t look at Billy even in his super form without seeing the childish quirks that are right there, poorly hidden, on the surface of Billy’s body language, from the slight pout to the defiant posture—rankles under Bruce’s admonitions and says, “Okay. Fine. Sorry for stressing you out. Do you want to talk about something else? Work? Life? You still haven’t told me the rest of that story about the paper clip.”

Bruce scowls at this attempt to change the subject. “I’m serious, Billy. Don’t do that again. It’s dangerous.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Billy frowns. Then, hesitating for a moment before visibly making a decision, he turns and flies away—his white cape billowing in the breeze behind him—to go somewhere and brood.

_Hey,_ Bruce thinks, indignant. _That’s my move._

But after a moment that thought sinks in and he feels a little smug (despite the knowledge that he really shouldn't be), because his protégé is following in his footsteps. _Bat-steps?_

Either way, it’s almost...sweet. As if Billy’s a kid dressing up in his father’s oversized clothes and trying to be like him. Though of course Bruce is not actually his dad, so that analogy is….

_Shit._ Bruce stands on the roof of a warehouse halfway between Philadelphia and Gotham and does some soul-searching. _Why do I feel like Billy’s my son?_

 

Bruce groans.

“Alfred,” he says, voice muffled by the arm draped dramatically over his face. “I don't know what to do.”

There’s a sound of fabric rustling nearby and then, in crisp British tones, “Indeed, Master Bruce?”

Bruce drops his arm and shoots Alfred, who is glancing down at him from his position standing on the other side of the couch, a plaintive look. “Do you know how frustrating it is to feel paternal toward a kid who’s not even yours? I just want to swoop in and give him everything he wants—to make sure he's taken care of—but he’s not mine, so I can’t.”

“No,” Alfred says, wry. “I’m afraid I have no idea what that’s like.”

_No idea at all, Master Bruce,_ Alfred thinks. It’s a testament to his professionalism that he doesn't roll his eyes in fond exasperation as he remembers the long nights he has spent nursing this young man blinking helplessly up at him back to health from a sickness or assisting him with his school work or counseling him through the difficulties that life has thrown at him. Sometimes Bruce says things that amuse him. _No, I have not had any paternal feelings toward a son who was not my own. Ha._

Bruce seems to accept his words at face value. He sighs, says, “Yeah. I thought so,” and then, “Thanks anyway, Alfred.”

If Alfred does roll his eyes at that, Bruce doesn't look up to see it.

 

And then the moment that will make Billy wish for a bolt of lightning to come down and smite him finally arrives:

They've just gotten back from dealing with the Big Bad Villain of the Month, and Bruce tells him, “Nice work out there today. You did well.”

Billy grins, leans back from the long mahogany table that a handful of League members are gathered around, and, obviously not putting much thought into it, says, “Thanks, Dad.”

He freezes. His eyes widen. “I mean. Br—uh—Batman. Dark Knight. Fellow colleague.”

“Do you consider Bruce a father figure, Billy?” Diana asks, a smile growing on her face.

Billy flushes. “No,” he says, too abrupt to be convincing. “If anything I consider him a bother figure, because he's always bothering me.”

Barry, who’s sitting in the seat next to Billy’s, nudges him with an elbow and says, “Hey, show your father some respect.”

Billy goes an even darker shade of red.

Clark grins at his end of the table. “Is that true, Bruce? Are you always bothering him?”

Bruce scowls. “I’m Batman. I don't bother people. I calmly intervene when I catch them doing something stupid.”

“Hey—!”

Bruce sends Billy a silencing look. It’s very effective.

Billy glances helplessly around at the amused faces of his heroes and wonders how he’s ever going to show his face again.

 

After the meeting is over, Bruce finally invites Billy to visit Wayne Manor. Billy thinks that this is just an opportunity for Bruce to show him around the place that Billy has been asking so many questions about, or possibly—if he’s unlucky—to discuss Billy’s unfortunate slip-of-the-tongue at the meeting, but there is another item on the agenda.

Bruce—seeming impressively chill for a man who has a blank stack of adoption papers in the desk of his office at home just in case—asks, “How’s your family life?”

“It’s good,” Billy says. “Why?”

Bruce clears his throat. “I know that you live in a group home. I also know the foster system often isn’t the best place to be, so, if you want to...you can stay with me.”

“Stay with you.” Billy stares. Words elude him. “Like, in your house?”

Bruce looks away. “That’s the idea. I could become your legal guardian. You’d have a room here, access to medical attention if you ever need it after going out as Shazam, and I’d...look out for you.”

“Like a dad.”

Bruce shifts uncomfortably. “Yes.”

And in another universe—one where there had been no Vasquez family to take Billy in and show him what it means to truly have a home—Billy would have been thrilled at the idea of living with one of his childhood heroes, this grumpy but kindhearted man with a philanthropist streak and enough parent-related emotional baggage to rival Billy’s own.

But they’re not in another universe. They're in this one. And in this one….

“I already have a dad,” Billy says, apologetic, but in a light tone that strikes Bruce as bizarrely similar to the way salespeople apologize when they've just checked the inventory in the back of the store and are sorry to inform a customer that they're out of a certain shoe size. “But you can be my cool uncle, if you want.”

Bruce stifles a laugh. “I’m not sure if that's how that works, kid.”

Billy grins at him anyway. “Is that a yes?”

(It is.)

 

That evening Victor comes home from work a bit later than usual to find Billy waiting at the door to greet him with a hug.

“Hey,” Victor says, surprised, patting his son on the back. “What's this for?”

Billy smiles into his shoulder. “No reason.”

Then he pulls back a little and says, feeling kind of shy about it but thinking it needs to be said anyway, “I. Uh. I love you, you know? You're a good dad.”

Victor gets this soft look and says, “I love you, too, kiddo.”

Then, “Can I get that in writing?”


End file.
